A red tainted Silence (11 page)

What the hell was going on?

I laid my hands against the window panes, balancing on my crutches. So cold. So damn cold out there, beneath my hands. The parking lot was below my window. I could see a TV

van of some sort pulling into a space. There were others, of course. The press conference. I thumped the glass with my hand, then did it again, harder. And harder. I bit my lip and did it again, making the window shake, crazily imagining breaking the glass, feeling the shards slip into my skin, making me feel anything but the terror skittering through me now.

“Mr. Ashwood, please be careful --”

The door opened. I whirled around, barely able to stop the pent-up panic from exploding, and hobbled over to the cop sticking his head inside. His gaze fell on me. “Mr.

Ashwood, Mr. Kilmain needs you. He’s all right.” I’d be the judge of that. I brushed angrily past the cop guarding me -- he followed, much to my annoyance -- and swung my way back to Nick’s room.

The cop who had fetched me stopped me. “Not in there. We moved him,” he said, indicating the room across the hall.

I pushed my way into the room. “Nick.” I headed straight for the bed where Nicholas lay, pale and ghostly underneath blankets. “What happened, Nick?” I set my crutches aside and cradled his face. “Look at me, Nicholas,” I said, touching his face, his shoulders, his chest.

He seemed okay, but for the deadness in his eyes as he turned them to me.

“Barkley. They killed Barkley.”

“What?” That was impossible. My brother was with Barkley, at Nick’s house in New York.

Detective Anderson stepped up. “Mr. Kilmain received a package while we were down the hall.” He glanced at Nicholas. I reached for Nick’s hand. He clung to me as if he’d never let go. As he had when I’d first found him.

“It had --” Nicholas closed his eyes and turned his head. Tears streamed down his cheek.

“There were animal remains inside, and a picture of his dog.” And that’s why Nicholas had screamed.

Without hesitation I grabbed the phone. I asked for an outside line, only to learn I couldn’t make a long-distance call. “I need a blasted phone that works,” I said, slamming it down. The detective handed me his. “I’ll reimburse you,” I told him, quickly dialing Nick’s home phone with an ease that belied how little I’d called it over the past two and a half years.

A Red-Tainted Silence

59

I waited for its ring as I sat on the edge of the bed. “Come on, come on,” I whispered, casting a glance at Nicholas. He’d clenched his hands to his chest as if he were praying.

Perhaps he was.

“Hello?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s Brandon. Where’s Barkley.”

“Hey, bro, what’s up? Barkley’s right here. Why?” And I heard the anxious canine snuffling. “Get down, Barkley, shit dog. Sorry, Brandon, he jumped on me when he heard his name.”

I reached out, stroked Nick’s face. He’d been holding his breath as I talked, staring through the bedrail. He’d had a hell of a cruel shock, and fury pumped through me, but I fought to calm my voice. “Nicholas, he’s still with my brother. He’s fine. That wasn’t him.” Nicholas turned to me, disbelief on his face. He reached for my hand and I held on to him, tight. “Are you sure?” he said.

I turned back to the phone. “Can Nicholas talk to him?” My brother didn’t laugh at the odd request. “Brandon, what’s going on?” I closed my eyes, squeezing them tight, and took a deep breath as my chest finally loosened. “Someone sent a package to Nicholas, made it look like ... like Barkley.”

“Oh, shit. Someone sent him a dead dog?”

“I think so. I haven’t seen it.”

“Shit, yeah, put Nicholas on. Come here, Barkley -- Hey, easy dog!” I handed the phone to Nicholas. He took it from me, his gaze holding mine as he hesitated. I nodded in encouragement, and he put the phone to his ear.

“Barkley? You there, bud?” he said, his voice soft, unsure. Eyes shut, he clenched my hand once, then released it to wipe away his tears. He smiled at me and nodded, relief flooding his face. “Okay. Good. That would be ...” He sighed. “... wonderful.” I brushed away his tears myself, then bent down and kissed him briefly on the lips before pulling back. I looked up at the detective -- sympathy and a hard edge of anger similar to what I was feeling ghosted his face. Nicholas ended the call and handed the detective his telephone. “Thank you, detective.”

“Get some rest, Mr. Kilmain. I want to talk to Mr. Ashwood for a few minutes.”

“Brandon, your brother’s going to bring Barkley to me. They’re leaving tomorrow.” I nodded. We’d already planned on that. We’d been going to surprise Nicholas, but this was probably best. Barkley would go nuts when he saw Nicholas again after so long, and it would be good for him to have his dog around until we could get out of here. He loved that dog. That dog was his family, like his child.

And whoever had done this to him, sent that package, knew it.

60 Carolyn Gray

“Good. By the time they get here, we’ll be out of this place, I promise,” I said, stroking his jaw line with one finger.

He smiled tiredly and leaned into my touch. Then he took a deep breath; a little color had returned to his face. “Hey, what time is the press conference?” The detective grimaced. “We’ll cancel it.”

Nick’s eyes widened and his gaze flicked to me. “No, we can’t do that. I’m fine now.” I hesitated, but the detective said, “We could postpone it for a couple of hours. Give you time to recover a bit.”

I glanced at my watch. “Three now. Six?”

The detective nodded and left the room for a moment. When he was gone, Nicholas and I said nothing to each other, just held each other’s hands. There was no need to say a word.

I remembered this, the comfortable silence, the quiet companionship. Despite most people’s beliefs to the contrary, Nicholas had a quiet, reflective side. He loved to read and would lose himself for hours with his nose in a book, even a textbook, inhaling whatever was inside. He liked to share what he learned. He’d taught me a lot that way over the years, just by reading things to me, often while I was trying to do something else, but I hadn’t minded.

I’d always envied him, his voracious need to learn, his ability to absorb. I’d admired him, too, for finishing school. It wasn’t like he’d had to -- I sure never found it necessary --

but Nicholas didn’t like leaving things undone. It settled on me then -- that was the last time I’d heard from him, before he’d disappeared. He’d finished college, taking his final classes and graduating just this past summer. He’d called me out of the blue one day to let me know he’d gotten his diploma.

I’d been congratulatory, of course, but formal, abrupt. We’d hung up after just a couple of minutes. I don’t know what he’d done, but I’d gone to the beach after that and stared into the waves for hours, unseeing, going over and over again how his voice sounded, trying to decide if that was really need I’d heard in his voice. If he’d really missed me.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked me now.

I shook my head. “Berating myself.”

“For?”

“For never sending you a graduation present. I’m proud of you, Nicholas. Did you know that?”

“Kiss me. Show me.”

I laughed, leaning down to do as he asked. His hand captured the back of my head when I would’ve pulled away. I let our kiss deepen, reveling in the amazing feel of his tongue. I’d starved for the feel of that tongue against mine. I smiled into our kiss and he released me.

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61

“What are you smiling about?”

I sat back up, wiping the moisture on his lip away. “I don’t know. I’m just so happy you’re okay. That your dog is okay. That you still want to kiss me.”

“I never stopped wanting that, Brandon.”

I nodded, taking his hand in mine and bringing it to my lips, kissing his knuckles, laying my cheek against his still-bruised hand. “I know. I know.” The detective returned. “All set. Six o’clock, bottom floor.”

“Thought I heard groans from the basement,” Nicholas said.

“We need to talk.” The detective looked at me, and I nodded.

Nicholas frowned at our conspiratorial glance. “What is it? What haven’t you told me?”

“Mr. Kilmain, the reason I came to the hospital this afternoon was to tell Mr. Ashwood that the autopsy on the man he -- on your captor was completed this morning. It wasn’t Percy Blevins.”

“You’re kidding.” Nicholas snorted, his eyes disbelieving. “I know that was Percy. It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“You were blindfolded the entire time in captivity, Mr. Kilmain, and this is probably why. Blevins is alive and in prison in Los Angeles. It wasn’t him.” If I’d expected Nicholas to crumple in fear, I was wrong to make assumptions. His gaze hardened; his jaw clenched. His hands curled over the bedrails, gripping until his knuckles turned even whiter than they already were. “Who was it, then? Who did this to me?” he demanded.

“We don’t know yet. But he didn’t act alone.”

Then I heard a word I’d never, ever heard Nicholas say. “Fuck!” I had to agree with him. “If you don’t want to do the conference, we can wait another day, Nicholas.”

“No. I can handle it,” he said, his blue eyes glinting with anger. “Whoever the bastard is that sent that ... that package to me, is sitting out there, gloating. I won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing I freaked out.”

“Nicholas,” I said, then hesitated, but I knew that defiant look in his eyes. He wouldn’t be dissuaded. “All right. I’d like to talk alone with Nicholas for a minute, detective. If you don’t mind.”

He nodded and stepped a little away, but didn’t leave us completely alone. Somehow I doubted we’d have much alone time now. The two uniformed cops still stood at the door like royal guards -- stern, expressionless, keeping an eye on us. I wondered what they thought of our kissing, and decided I didn’t care.

Damn, I’d come a long, long way.

“Nick, there’s more. They found copies of a tape in this guy’s place.” 62 Carolyn Gray

“Copies of a tape? What tape?”

Here it was, at last. That which I’d vowed never, ever to tell Nicholas. I sat on the bed again, taking Nick’s hand in mine. “Remember when we went to Hawaii that time? Just the two of us?” I said, lowering my voice.

A wary smile spread across his face. It’d been just after our first number-one single. To celebrate we’d jumped on a plane the next day and taken off for the Hawaiian Islands -- I’d promised Nicholas I’d go with him there to see the volcanoes, if we ever had a number one. I didn’t like to break promises, though it happened too often anyway.

But that one was easy. It was the best weekend of my life, the last one before everything started to sour.

“I remember. That was heaven.”

I smiled, because he was right. “Yeah, it was.”

“We had that little place on the beach, just the two of us, secluded. I’d like to go back there someday.”

I sure as hell wouldn’t. “Someone filmed us the entire time we were there, Nicholas.” He stilled. He held his breath, turning his face to me as realization hit. “No way.”

“Yes,” I said softly. “Everything we did was captured on film. Everything.” My face heated as I remembered some of what had gone on there. We’d been young, maybe a little naïve to be carrying on like we had, infinitely creative. We’d discovered sides to each other and ourselves that weekend that neither of us had expected existed.

“The blackmail,” he whispered, his gaze hardening. He snatched his hand from mine.

“This is what it was, isn’t it? It was all about that, wasn’t it?” I nodded.

He started to shake. I reached for him, but he stunned me by pulling away. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t let him ruin you. You were just starting to take off --”

“We were just starting to take off,” he said, his voice low with anger. “We, Brandon. It was always we. Us. The two of us,” he said, thumping my chest. “Fuck you. Why didn’t you tell me?”

I gulped, stunned. “He -- he threatened to expose us. Send the tape everywhere. It would’ve destroyed Dream.”

He glared at me. “So you made the decision to pay that bastard money, to keep the tape out of circulation. Is that it?”

I nodded, taken aback by his anger. I hadn’t expected this. Tears, humiliation -- but anger? “I couldn’t let him ruin everything. So, yeah, I paid him to leave you alone.”

“But don’t you see? It ruined everything anyway. That’s why you pulled back. That’s why you quit on me, wasn’t it?”

A Red-Tainted Silence

63

I couldn’t deny what he said, could only nod. Nicholas shrank away from me. The detective glanced up and away again. “I didn’t know he’d go this far, in the end,” I said, my voice hurting from the clog in my throat, the unshed tears. “After a while, he started to threaten you, Nicholas. I couldn’t let that happen.”

“He threatened me? When? When did he start to threaten me like that?” The familiar misery washed over me. “Hungary. When we were in Hungary.” Nicholas covered his face with his hands. The cuts and bruises on them were healing, but at that moment they looked as fresh and accusatory as if he’d just been hurt. I closed my eyes as the memory of how I’d found him flashed in my mind -- naked except for the cursed blindfold, filthy, bruised, nearly bleeding to death, his legs and arms bound. It burned. How that memory burned.

“I made a mistake, Nicholas. You’re right about that. I should’ve told you.” I shook my head, running my hand wearily over my face. I was so tired. So damned tired. “But I was young, and scared, and I remembered what he said, that night -- that first night.” Remembered panic seized me. I tried to fight it down, but it showed in my voice. “I couldn’t let that happen to you again.”

“But it did anyway, didn’t it?” he said softly. “And it doesn’t even sound like it was Blevins. Dammit, you should’ve told me. I had the right to know someone else was fucking with our lives.”

I couldn’t stand the harsh anger lacing his voice. He had every right to be angry, of course, but I couldn’t stand hearing it. “I should have told you, because now I know that would’ve taken his power away from him. But I couldn’t see that then. All I knew was how happy you were. I -- I didn’t want to spoil it.”